John McCabe: Horn Quintet (Parts): Chamber Ensemble: Parts

John McCabe's Concerto For Piano And Wind Quintet. Commissioned by the Birmingham Chamber Music Society for first performance by the Venturi Ensemble (Sebastian Bell Philip Jones Roy Jowitt Alan Hammond James Diack and John McCabe) on 21 February 1970.

First performance 12 October 2011 at St George's Hall Liverpool by David Pyatt (horn) and the Sacconi String Quartet as part of the Centenary Concert of the Rodewald Concert Series.Composer's NoteThroughout my musical life I have found the horn one of the most evocative and beautiful of all instruments and it is no surprise that I have written a number of works for it including a concerto a trio with violin and piano and a triptych of concert works for horn and piano. Writing a work for horn and string quartet has long been an ambition therefore fuelled not only by my love of the instrument but also by theastonishingly small repertoire of horn quintets.This work was commissioned to celebrate their centenary by the Rodewald Concert Society Liverpool who gave me an invaluable education in the masterpieces of the chamber music repertoire at their concerts which I attended regularly during my schooldays. The quintet is dedicated to Nancy and Douglas Brady two of my oldest and closest friends from Liverpool. It was written in 2010/11 and is continuous. There are however three main ?movements?: an opening quick one which is interrupted twice by brief slow interludes referring to the motto heard at the start a substantial slow movement which also contains two short scherzando sections (much as Brahms?s A major Violin Sonata has two quick trio sections in its slow movement) and a fast finale a descendant of the Beethoven one-in-a-bar scherzo.The scherzando interludes interwoven with the slow movement are frequently muted and have something of an other-worldly atmosphere perhaps Queen Mab came to deliver me of some dreams while I was writing it. At the end of the finale the furious activity gives way to an elegiac conclusion which I feel was greatly influenced by events in the world outside at the time of composition the music descending to a quiet sustained C on horn and cello. The work lasts just over 20 minutes and was first

Hawk in Winter Light was inspired by the sight of a hawk circling obsessively on a bright November day hence the constantly circular nature of the music and especially its melodic material. Though the central section is quicker the underlying pulse remains the same and the transition to a quicker tempo is hardly noticeable. The piece is therefore and unusually for a brass quintet a single entity in which the outer sections are closely related the final part being partly a reprise and partly a variation of the opening.The piece was commissioned by the KlaraFestival of Flanders and is dedicated to Fine Arts Brass who gave its first performance during thefestival in Belgium on the 20 September 2005.